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How To Get Anyone To Switch Off Their Phone

If you check your phone the moment your eyes open, if you read the news through a drowsy eye, if you are paying more attention to social media than the humans around you, we could postulate that you are addicted to your phone.

But there is a straightforward way to reduce it and it is exactly three clicks away.

Human beings are simple creatures. We are attracted to beautiful things: shapes, colours and images.

Nice things are nice to watch, social transmissions are nice to get around, and our brains are connected to want more and more of that.

As the perfect balance of salt/sugar in McDonalds’ food, and the psychologically attractive design of a supermarket, your phone and apps are full of tricks to keep it going for longer and come back for more.

That’s why you can find yourself so easily flipping through without thinking about Instagram when you want to check your email for a minute quickly. That’s why you neglect to look when your loved one is talking to you.

But if you want to reduce the use of your phone, the answer is simple: remove the color and turn grey.

Mack McKelvey, executive director of marketing firm SalientMG in Washington, told the New York Times: “You do not buy boxes of cereals in black and white, you buy a stimulating color, and these applications have developed cool tiles, great ” shapes, cold colors, everything designed to stimulate you. But there is a vibrant world, and your phone should not be. ”